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Predicting the length of hospital stay for myasthenia gravis (MG) patients is challenging due to the complex pathogenesis, high clinical variability, and non-linear relationships between variables. Considering the management of MG during hospitalization, it is important to conduct a risk assessment to predict the length of hospital stay. The present study aimed to successfully predict the length of hospital stay for MG based on an expandable data mining technique, multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS). Data from 196 MG patients' hospitalization were analyzed, and the MARS model was compared with classical multiple linear regression (MLR) and three other machine learning (ML) algorithms. The average hospital stay duration was 12.3 days. The MARS model, leveraging its ability to capture non-linearity, identified four significant factors: disease duration, age at admission, MGFA clinical classification, and daily prednisolone dose. Cut-off points and correlation curves were determined for these risk factors. The MARS model outperformed the MLR and the other ML methods (including least absolute shrinkage and selection operator MLR, classification and regression tree, and random forest) in assessing hospital stay length. This is the first study to utilize data mining methods to explore factors influencing hospital stay in patients with MG. The results highlight the effectiveness of the MARS model in identifying the cut-off points and correlation for risk factors associated with MG hospitalization. Furthermore, a MARS-based formula was developed as a practical tool to assist in the measurement of hospital stay, which can be feasibly supported as an extension of clinical risk assessment.

Digital low-dropout (DLDO) is widely used for power management in the system-on-chip (SoC) because of its low-voltage operation and process scalability. However, conventional DLDOs suffer from the trade-off between transient response and power consumption of the DLDO and the clock generator. This paper proposes an event-driven self-clocked DLDO regulator. The proposed low quiescent current (IQ) event-driven adaptive frequency clock generator (EACG) adapts its frequency in different load conditions without a current sensor or complex compensation circuit for stable operation in the entire load range. The proposed DLDO does not need any external clocking signal and can maintain low output ripple and low power consumption in the steady-state. The clock-less transient detector (CLTD), consisting of two clock-independent transient detection paths, uses power more efficiently and improves the transient response significantly without sacrificing the power consumption. This work was fabricated in a 40 nm CMOS process with an 0.3 nF on-chip capacitor. The measurement results show that with the step load current between 1 mA and 60 mA, the proposed DLDO achieves a transient recovery time of 220 ns. The total IQ of the proposed DLDO is only 26 μA in steady-state, and it achieves stable operation in the entire load range.

Abstract Background Haworthia are desert succulents belonging to the Asphodelaceae family. Haworthia species are cultivated commercially as ornamentals and some rare species are quite valuable at retail market but growth slowly and difficult to propagation. However, an efficient micropropagation protocol was remained insufficient. Results The organogenic cultures obtained from inflorescence explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with various combinations of 6-benzylaminopurine (BA) and α-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) under a light intensity of 10 μmol m−2 s−1 or 45 μmol m−2 s−1. The highest callus proliferation index (93.15%) with 1.0 mg L−1 BA + 0.1 mg L−1 NAA under a light intensity of 10 μmol m−2 s−1. The best shoot proliferation rates were on media with either 1 mg L−1 BA + 0–0.4 mg L−1 NAA (65.57–81.01%) under a light intensity of 45 μmol m−2 s−1. The highest root length (15.57 mm) and the highest rooting frequency (17 roots per shoot) were obtained when adventitious shoots were inoculated on MS medium with 0.4 mg L−1 NAA + 0.4 mg L−1 IBA. The survival rate of the transplanted plantlets was about 100%. The efficient micropropagation protocol proliferated Haworthia regenerate plants from inflorescence within 11 weeks. Conclusions The present study determined the best combination of light intensity and plant growth regulators (PGRs) for improved organogenesis of Haworthia during propagation by tissue culture. This optimized protocol showed light intensity is an important factor for efficient callus or shoot regeneration. These results indicate that it will be useful to optimize the light conditions for future commercial cultivation, germplasm conservation, genetic engineering and molecular biology research of this ornamental plant.

This paper presents a non-orthogonal multiplexing scheme using the concept of rateless coding for a downlink broadcast scheme with two users. The proposed approach does not require the inclusion of successive interference cancellation (SIC) techniques for signal detection when compared to the power-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) schemes. In various user pair scenarios, it is shown that the proposed scheme not only enhances the user transmission rate but also reduces the overhead required for reliable transmissions when compared to PD-NOMA-based schemes. To further enhance the error performance when considering both unconstrained and constrained inputs, a code design algorithm is proposed based on the transmission rate analysis. It is shown that the designed rateless multiplexing schemes achieve error performances that accurately approach the predicted performance limits.

Electricity is critical for industrial and economic advancement, as well as a driving force for sustainable development. In turn, reducing energy consumption for sustainability and both tracking and managing energy efficiently have become critical challenges. In this research, we analyzed electricity consumption from the perspective of load profiling, which charts variations in electrical load during a specified period in order to track energy consumption of an annealing furnace in a co-operating steel forging plant. We made a preliminary proposal to use a symbolic time-series data mining framework for electricity consumption analysis. First, we adopted a piecewise aggregate approximation (PAA) approach to perform dimension reduction. Then, we refined the distance measure of the symbolic aggregate approximation (SAX) algorithm. SAX is a symbolic representation of time-series for dimensionality reduction and indexing with a lower-bounding distance measure. Our experimental results showed that the dimension reduction method known as PAA can better detect the state of the annealing furnace compared to the fixed feature point (FFP) method. In addition, the refined lower-bounding distance measure proved to be better than the traditional measure for calculating the similarity between energy load profiles. The results can help the plant conduct further normal and abnormal electricity pattern detection.

Inter-sectional hybrids were successfully obtained by the reciprocal crosses between 11 cultivars (including 6 diploids and 5 tetraploids) oí Begonia semperflorens (SS & SSSS genomes) and B. 'Orange Rubra' (RR genome) with the aid of in vitro culture of mature or immature seeds on MS medium containing 0.1 mg 1-1 &agr;-naphthylacetic acid, 0.1 mg 1-1 6-benzyladenine, 10mg 1-1 gibberellic acid, 30g1-1 sucrose and 2.5 g 1-1 gellan gum. Embryo rescue as ovary culture with immature seeds 12th-16th day after pollination (DAP) generally gave higher efficiency of plantlet formation, but in some cross combinations, culture of mature seeds (30 DAP) resulted in higher yield of plantlets. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that they were consisted of the plants with various genomic combinations (RS, RR, RSS, RRS, RRSS and RRRRSS) as estimated by the DNA contents of both parents. Hybridity of these plants with various genomic combinations including RR was confirmed by random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis. These results suggested that unreduced gamete formation and spontaneous chromosome doubling were involved in the hybrid formation of various ploidy levels and genomic combinations. These hybrids showed various levels of intermediate traits between both parents according to the genomic compositions, and some of them had desirable characters of both parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tungsten missing was observed at the interface between contact barrier layer and W in the 28 nm node contact process. The potentiodynamic polarization scans showed that H2O2 in the W chemical-mechanical-polishing slurry increased the potential difference between the diborane (B2H6) reduced atomic layer deposited (ALD) W and TiN, suggesting that there is a high tendency for galvanic corrosion to occur. This potential difference kept constant, but the corrosion current density increased when the H2O2 concentration increased. The TEM image showed the depth of ALD W missing is proportional to the H2O2 concentration, which agrees with the electrochemical testing results. ALD W films with various pre- and post-treatments and their correlations with the degree of W missing were also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to test the efficiency of semidefinite programming (SDP), we apply SDP software package to the solution of open-loop unstable systems under input saturation. And we compare the ease of programming and the execution time for solving the problem between the classical approach (which applies a nonlinear equation solver to the Kuhn-Tucker conditions) and the SDP approach (which exploits interior-point algorithms) for three techniques in this paper. It is also shown that, for certain types of optimization problems, SDP is indeed very efficient. However, our examples show that SDP has limitations in solving non-convex optimization problems. It is also shown that the technique we proposed, namely that of approximating the controllable set inside the Lyapunov descent criterion, is better than the controllable set found by SDP, even though the execution time is inferior to the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human cytochrome P450 2B6 can metabolize a number of clinical drugs. Inhibition of CYP2B6 by coadministered multiple drugs may lead to drug–drug interactions and undesired drug toxicity. The aim of this investigation is to develop an in silico model to predict the interactions between P450 2B6 and novel inhibitors using a novel hierarchical support vector regression (HSVR) approach, which simultaneously takes into account the coverage of applicability domain (AD) and the level of predictivity. Thirty-seven molecules were deliberately selected and rigorously scrutinized from the literature data, of which 26 and 11 molecules were treated as the training set and the test set to generate the models and to validate the generated models, respectively. The generated HSVR model gave rise to an r2 value of 0.97 for observed versus predicted pKm values for the training set, a q2 value of 0.93 by the 10-fold cross-validation, and an r2 value of 0.82 for the test set. Additionally, the predicted results show that the HSVR model outperformed the individual local models, the global model, and the consensus model. Thus, this HSVR model provides an accurate tool for the prediction of human cytochrome P450 2B6-substrate interactions and can be utilized as a primary filter to eliminate the potential selective inhibitor of CYP2B6. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Purpose  The objective of this investigation was to yield a generalized in silico model to quantitatively predict CYP2A6-substrates/inhibitors interactions to facilitate drug discovery. Methods  The newly invented pharmacophore ensemble/support vector machine (PhE/SVM) scheme was employed to generate the prediction model based on the data compiled from the literature. Results  The predictions by the PhE/SVM model are in good agreement with the experimental observations for those molecules in the training set (n = 24, r 2 = 0.94, q 2 = 0.85, RMSE = 0.30) and the test set (n = 9, r 2 = 0.96, RMSE = 0.29). In addition, this in silico model performed equally well for those molecules in the external validation sets, namely one set of benzene and naphthalene derivatives (n = 45, r 2 = 0.81, RMSE = 0.46) and one set of amine neurotransmitters (n = 4, r 2 = 0.98, RMSE = 0.32). Furthermore, when compared with crystal structures, the calculated results are consistent with the published CYP2A6-substrate co-complex structure and the plasticity nature of CYP2A6 is also revealed. Conclusions  This PhE/SVM model is an accurate and robust model and can be utilized for predicting interactions with CYP2A6, high-throughput screening and data mining to facilitate drug discovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing in-mold electromagnetic stirrers (M-EMS) that are widely applied in the steel industries have experienced low efficiencies due to the high operational temperatures and open system structures. Based on simple mechanical attachments and verified by detailed 3-D electromagnetic field analyses, this paper will propose a guided field path arrangement that can enhance the overall performance of an M-EMS system by a factor of 28% in the designated stirring directions while maintaining the same energy inputs. Such evident improvements will certainly provide a valuable design and adjustment guidance for the related metal industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the controllable set (stability region) of a linear time-invariant open-loop unstable system with constrained input. In particular, we apply the Lyapunov descent criterion and Kuhn-Tucker Theorem to the case when the input is allowed to saturate. We demonstrate our approach by a real submarine case, and find the 3D controllable set for the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  The monolithic hysteresis-current-controlled (HCC) buck and boost converters with simplified convergence analysis methods are presented. The architectures of both converters are very simple and only consist of few components. The convergence condition, which is independent to duty cycle of converters, is derived in this paper. Using this concept to synthesize current-mode converters, the component values of converters will be designed easily. There is no sub-harmonic oscillation in the proposed converters without slope compensation even if the duty cycle greater than 50%. The proposed circuits are implemented into a single chip with TSMC 0.35 μm CMOS DPQM processes and their chip area is only 2.25 mm2, respectively. The maximum power efficiency of proposed converters is measured and described in this paper, too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transducin is a prototypic heterotrimeric G-protein mediating visual signaling in vertebrate photoreceptor cells. Despite its central role in phototransduction, little is known about the mechanisms that regulate its expression and maintain approximately stoichiometric levels of the α- and βγ-subunits. Here we demonstrate that the knock-out of transducin γ-subunit leads to a major downregulation of both α- and γ-subunit proteins, despite nearly normal levels of the corresponding transcripts, and fairly rapid photoreceptor degeneration. Significant fractions of the remaining α- and β-subunits were mislocalized from the light-sensitive outer segment compartment of the rod. Yet, the tiny amount of the α-subunit present in the outer segments of knock-out rods was sufficient to support light signaling, although with a markedly reduced sensitivity. These data indicate that the γ-subunit controls the expression level of the entire transducin heterotrimer and that heterotrimer formation is essential for normal transducin localization. They further suggest that the production of transducin β-subunit without its constitutive γ-subunit partner sufficiently stresses the cellular biosynthetic and/or chaperone machinery to induce cell death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the thermal stability behavior of nanoscale polysilicide resistors with different dopant types was investigated in 90 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor process. It was found that thermal stability performance of polysilicide resistors was impacted not only by the silicide thickness but also by the relation between silicide grain size distribution and the actual poly linewidth. A quantitative equation for thermal stability was derived by the combination of thickness and linewidth. This equation showed good correlation with the activation energy of the degradation for the narrow poly width resistors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to test the efficiency of recently developed semidefinite programming (SDP), we apply SDP software package to the solution of our optimization problems. And we compare the ease of programming and the execution time for solving the problem between the classical approach (which applies a nonlinear equation solver to the Kuhn-Tucker conditions) and the SDP approach (which exploits interior-point algorithms). It is also shown that, for certain types of optimization problems, SDP is indeed very efficient. However, our examples show that SDP has limitations in solving non-convex optimization problems. It is also shown that the controllable set approximated by SDP is very efficient, however, the resulting controllable set is somewhat smaller than the set approximated under Lyapunov descent criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the thermal stability of polysilicon lines with various widths and different dopant types in 90-nm processes is investigated. The thermal behavior of silicides formed on N+ polyresistors and P+ polyresistors is very different. The worst thermal stability is found on the narrower N+ polyresistors, while an abnormal thermal behavior is observed on P+ polyresistors. This anomalous thermal-stability change with different drawn linewidths of P+ polyresistors is related to the grain-size distribution and the actual polyresistor linewidth. Also, it is interesting to find that the voids formed in P+ polyresistors lead to a stepped increase in sheet resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over a decade, phosducin's interaction with the βγ subunits of the G protein, transducin, has been thought to contribute to light adaptation by dynamically controlling the amount of transducin heterotrimer available for activation by photoexcited rhodopsin. In this study we directly tested this hypothesis by characterizing the dark- and light-adapted response properties of phosducin knockout (Pd-/-) rods. Pd-/- rods were notably less sensitive to light than wild-type (WT) rods. The gain of transduction, as measured by the amplification constant using the Lamb-Pugh model of activation, was 32% lower in Pd-/- rods than in WT rods. This reduced amplification correlated with a 36% reduction in the level of transducin βγ-subunit expression, and thus available heterotrimer in Pcl-/- rods. l-lowever; commonly studied forms of light adaptation were normal in the absence of phosducin. Thus, phosducin does not appear to contribute to adaptation mechanisms of the outer segment by dynamically controlling heterotrimer availability, but rather is necessary for maintaining normal transducin expression and therefore normal flash sensitivity in rods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercially available novel cultivars of poinsettia, obtained through interspecific hybridization, were subject to colchicine-based mutagenesis to recover their fertility, enabling subsequent breeding. Mutagenic treatment was conducted at different concentrations of colchicine with either lanolin or cotton serving as the matrix. The results indicated that 1 day was the optimal duration of colchicine treatment and that suitable colchicine concentration varied by cultivar. Moreover, one-time treatment gave higher rates of both polyploidy and morphological mutant production than two-times treatment. Specifically, the poinsettia cultivars Dulce Rosa (5 mg·g-1 colchicine with lanolin; 10 mg·mL-1 colchicine with cotton) and Princettia-Hot Pink (15 mg·g-1 colchicine with lanolin; 10 mg·mL-1 colchicine with cotton) yielded relatively high polyploidy production efficiency and morphological mutation rate. Consequently, a total of three polyploidy mutants of 'Dulce Rosa' and 19 polyploidy mutants of 'Princettia-Hot Pink' were obtained. Both cultivars had mutants with recovered fertility, with pollen germination rate of up to 27.5%. Moreover, unexpected non-polyploidy mutants with various morphological trait variations were also obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]